The victory secured by Daniel Ricciardo in the 2021 Italian Grand Prix was identified by McLaren as the ideal ‘springboard’ for further technical improvement in view of the 2022 Formula 1 season, potentially favored also by the introduction of new regulations for the current season. However, the goal of significantly reducing the gap from the top teams does not seem to have been achieved by the Woking team, at least according to the results seen so far in the first part of the 2022 F1 championship.
The historic English team suffered numerous brake problems at the start of the season and, given Daniel Ricciardo’s poor performance, now finds itself having to fight for 4th place in the world championship with Alpine, which is currently four points ahead. With nine races from the end of the world championship, McLaren’s Technical Director, James Key, however, explained to GPFans what the solutions would be to try and get closer to the leading trio in the constructors’ championship, in the hope of being able to establish itself as the fourth top team:
” To be honest, the main element is largely linked to the rate of development of the car – explained the British manager – in the sense that your car has a certain level of potential, and you develop it up to a certain point. The updates brought to Hungary were the logical next step after Barcelona, and this work has actually been underway for quite a while. I think it gets to a point where it says: ‘The concept of our car has reached its peak, and now we have to start going in new directions’. I think Mercedes is in the middle of this situation, but they have made some really remarkable progress recently. They have certainly made more progress than us” – the McLaren boss added.
Furthermore, as admitted by James Key himself, it is not only Mercedes that has successfully achieved this objective: the Technical Director of the English team has in fact underlined the excellent work done by Red Bull and Ferrari, highlighting the differences that emerged between these two teams and his side: “We have optimized as much as possible – he added – and the next step, if possible (between budget caps and projects on the 2023 car) is to look at new directions, which can open up greater development potential. We have reached that point on the track, but not in terms of thinking; we’ve been working on it for a couple of months. We need to unlock new areas of development, and we have analyzed them in detail for next year. Obviously, if we look carefully at what the competitors have done, there are two teams that are demonstrating what is possible with the new generation of cars and that have surprised everyone else with their concepts”.
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James Key’s reference is obviously to Ferrari and Red Bull: the different aerodynamic concepts they found has allowed them to fight for race wins and proved more efficient than the rest of the concepts seen on the grid so far. The F1-75 cars have generous sidepods carved into them, while the RB18 focused on aerodynamic efficiency and therefore worked up that part of the car to offer the least possible air resistance. The Mercedes W13 ‘dragster’, on the other hand, has not been similarly effective for now.
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